Almost Heaven poodle found a happy ending

I've written a lot about the inaptly named Almost Heaven dog kennel in Upper Milford Township, and most of it has been negative.

But today, I have some good news related to Almost Heaven.

This story was triggered by an email I received early this month. It was from a former Baltimore Sun reporter whom I mentioned on my blog back in 2009. As part of a larger post about four cats my wife and I had adopted from a local rescue organization, Cat Shack, I provided a link to Baltimore Sun blog postings about one of the dogs rescued from Almost Heaven.

Sun reporter Jill Rosen was foster mother for Almost Heaven poodle mix Teddy Bean, and she also wrote Unleashed, "A blog for animals and the people who loved them."

Rosen said Teddy was fostered out by the Maryland SPCA because he had issues that made him unsuitable to be adopted right away. The SPCA was one of several shelters that received dogs seized in the U.S. Humane Society/state Bureau of Dog Law Enforcement raid that year on Almost Heaven. Rosen's blog traced Teddy's progress.

The raid was the second of two on Almost Heaven. The first, by the Pennsylvania SPCA, was in October 2008. Almost Heaven owner Derbe "Skip" Eckhart eventually went to jail for animal cruelty because of the awful conditions at his kennel, and readers still call or email me with reports on his animal-related activities, one of which landed him back in court last year, extending his probation by two years. I'll offer an update in a future column.

In that second raid in June 2009, Almost Heaven was shut down for good, and 216 dogs were seized and brought to the state Farm Show complex in Harrisburg. I went out there the next day and observed firsthand the process of evaluating and treating the frightened dogs before they were released to rescue groups for adoptions.

I ended the column with Diane Webber, HSUS director of disaster preparedness and shelter management, who traveled the country for emergency rescues of animals seized from puppy mills or stranded by national disasters.

She said rescue groups have sent them photos afterward of the happy dogs in their "forever homes." Some of them are barely recognizable as the traumatized animals she and her team saw when they were seized.

"It's the most rewarding work I have ever hoped to do," she told me.

I concluded, "I hope she gets lots of nice pictures of those Almost Heaven dogs in the months to come. They deserve happy endings."

That's what I got this month from Jill Rosen.

"Hey there Bill," read her email. "I think we corresponded a little bit at the time of the 2009 Almost Heaven raid. I worked then for the Baltimore Sun and adopted one of the 200-some pups pulled out of there that June. He was one of 18 dogs the Maryland SPCA brought to Baltimore from the PA fairground staging area after the raid. I got the last one … Teddy Bean, a little black poodle. I blogged a lot about Teddy, his story and how he slowly became a happy dog — and now arguably the most wonderful companion anyone could ask for."

"Tomorrow (July 3) will be the five-year anniversary of my bringing him home. So I thought it might make your day a little to know that at least one pup has overcome the awful start he got at that place. Tomorrow if the weather is good in the morning, we're going to celebrate with a trip to this really cool legal dog beach on the bay. He adores running in the sand."

You can see a current photo of Teddy Bean here. For a better before and after look, go to my blog Tuesday at themorningcall.com.

Rosen last year left the Sun and her Unleashed blog to go work for Johns Hopkins University. I asked her to give us a better sense of her dog's transformation.

"When Teddy first came out of there he thankfully didn't have any serious health problems — just underweight and a condition in his back leg knee joints that seemed to vanish as soon as he was running around, getting exercise and eating well. Mentally things were harder for him since he had very little positive human interaction and I'm quite positive he'd never seen a toy or a treat before … . But you wouldn't know any of that to see him now." Her vet estimated he was about a year old when she got him, which means he spent a year in a cage. Some of those dogs had never felt grass under their paws until they were rescued from the kennel.

She told me, "The SPCA had shaved him down — when I first saw him at the SPCA he was a mess — his fur all overgrown and matted. With poodles, you really have to brush the fur out all the time, so you can imagine what poodle fur would look like that had never been brushed and where the pup was probably spending all day sitting in poop. But they cleaned him up before I took him home, so in his first-day pictures he looks shorn down, shell-shocked and a little concentration-camp-ish."